Re: Evidence required for a passport in the 1920s
- From: "Don Moody" <dpmoody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 19:25:59 -0000
"Graham" <grahamfidler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:U4qdndLCwvy2atPaRVnyvQA@xxxxxxxxx
My mother, Grace Mary WINDER, was born on 9th October 1905 in London
according to her passport. This date tallies with the family view,
and with the details shown in her school records.
I can find no trace of her birth being registered at the GRO, nor
could I find any birth certificate at the Registrar in Brixton,
though I did find the certificate of her younger brother there, born
in 1908.
When she claimed her Old Age Pension in 1965, the Department
responsible for Pensions also could find no trace of a birth
certificate, and she had to get a school friend to sign an affidavit
to the effect that she had known my mother as school, and believed
that she was the age she claimed to be.
Nothing strange so far, an unregistered birth. However, she is known
to have travelled extensively in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, and so
must have had a passport then.
Nowadays you need a birth certificate to obtain a passport, was this
true then?
The reason I am searching for this information is that she was
always very reluctant to talk about her mother, and I am hoping that
it may point me towards evidence about her mother, such as her
surname, (given variously as MOORE, O?MOORE, GRADY, O?GRADY). I know
that my grandfather John James WINDER was working for Vickers
Armstrong in Barrow in Furness in August 1903, and that he moved to
London thereafter to work in the Vickers drawing office, from which
he retired in 1957. I assume that he moved to London and set up home
with Mary Isabella Hannah MOORE/GRADY, who had two children by a
previous marriage, which may well never have been ended, either by
her husband?s death, or by divorce. Certainly I can find no marriage
for John James WINDER.
I would welcome the groups? views on the evidence needed for a
passport in the 1920s, and on this problem in general.
Thanks
Graham Fidler
Sounds to me like thousands of other stories which start with a girl
getting pregnant in Ireland. The alternatives to running away to
England were pretty horrendous. So many turned up in Liverpool or
London. Have baby. Then what?
Baby given up for adoption. Or go out whoring to support it. Or..., Pr
if very lucky find a bloke to 'marry'. If the girl was married in
Ireland, and Catholic, divorce was not an option. So the English
marriage would be bigamous. Or maybe the English marriage was 'common
law'. Or if very very lucky it wasn't bigamous and she did get some
'marriage lines'. No guarantee that the first child born after the
English marriage was a child of the husband. Your grandfather may not
be your grandfather!
There are many variations on the theme and it doesn't matter much at
this stage which is the truth. The child would be brought up, if the
mother were lucky, thinking it was the child of a normal marriage and
its parents were who they said they were.
Contrary to the genealogists' neurosis about seeing certificates, I
have never come across such a child who asked to see its own birth
certificate or its parents' marriage certificate. If Mum and Dad say
it is so, it is so.
If that child then travelled 'on its parent's passport', as used to be
the case, then it wouldn't need one of its own.
Indeed the 'child' could be a ripe old age before it did need
documentation, and if by then its parents had died it wouldn't have
any means of getting information about its actual birthname. Since it
doesn't know the name, it can't find a birth certificate. You cannot
know that the birth was 'unregistered'. All you know is that it wasn't
registered in the name she thought was her own.
It illustrates one of the stupidities in the notion of proof of
identity. There is not, and never has been, any requirement that the
name registered at birth is used throughout life and in all officially
recorded events up to and including death. If, and only if, that was
the law and had been rigorously enforced, would the linking of records
be possible. The Passport Office is merely one lot of bureaucrats that
stumbles over the right to use different names; and falls flat on its
face when the applicant does not even know they are using a different
name to that used at birth.
It used to be a typical problem of adoptees who hadn't been told they
were adopted. Chaos ensued when they signed up for a school trip
overseas, needed their first passport, and couldn't get one
straightforwardly because there wasn't a birth certificate in the only
name they knew.
There are many other variations on this bit of the theme too.
So you are in for a lot of digging in many places in order to sort out
this mess, if it is sortable anyway. You may never get beyond the
screen of lies. That was, after all, the point of telling them in the
first place.
Don
.
- References:
- Evidence required for a passport in the 1920s
- From: Graham
- Evidence required for a passport in the 1920s
- Prev by Date: Re: Evidence required for a passport in the 1920s
- Next by Date: Re: Evidence required for a passport in the 1920s
- Previous by thread: Re: Evidence required for a passport in the 1920s
- Next by thread: Re: Evidence required for a passport in the 1920s
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
